Graphic: the local election results | Graphic:history of election results | Graphic: how London voted

Labour was almost entirely wiped out in the South yesterday, as its councillors lost hundreds of seats and nine councils across suburban England.

The party had little presence in the South before Thursday but it has now lost all but one of its councils in the South East and a significant party activist base. For a couple of hours yesterday, after Labour lost Reading to no overall control, the party appeared to have lost every town hall that it held in the South East. But strategists heaved a collective sigh of relief in the afternoon when Labour managed to win back four seats in Slough, the neighbouring Berkshire town, and retake the council.

Nevertheless, the party took a battering from the South West to the South East as its councillors lost one in four of all seats up for election. It slumped from being the largest party in Exeter to third place, allowed the Tories to take control of Southampton and lost a swath of seats in key councils including Milton Keynes, and Harlow, where the Tories also took control.

In Basingstoke, which remained under no overall control, the Labour leader lost his seat.

It was only by pure luck that David Cameron’s party failed to pick up Hastings as well, a key target. A tight fight with the local Liberal Democrats meant that there were six recounts at the town hall. In the end the control of the council was decided by the toss of a coin.

“Sometimes council seats have been won by the toss of a coin but never whole town halls,” said Rob Hayward, a local government expert.

Labour did as badly farther up the map in the West Midlands, where it has rarely faced a serious threat. One of the first shocks early yesterday was the Tory victory in Nuneaton and Bedworth, where the council flipped from Labour after 35 years.

Labour also unexpectedly lost Wolverhampton to no overall control. The picture even farther northwards was little better as the party lost a pile of seats in North Tyneside, Wigan and Sunderland. In Wales Labour also suffered catastrophic losses.

Council leaders disappeared into the woodwork yesterday muttering that national issues and Gordon Brown had driven them out of office. Many blamed the debacle over the 10p tax, which played on the doorstep in both the South and North, and Wales.

Local government experts cautioned that marginal parliamentary seats would now be at much greater risk because Labour’s southern activists would vanish at a stroke.

“The attrition of Labour seats in the South continues apace,” said Tony Travers, local government expert at the London School of Economics. “The last bit of the tank is being emptied and we are seeing a suburban effect going on all over the country. People in suburban England are deserting Labour in droves,” he said.

“The loss of Southampton will also be a terrible shock to Labour MPs in the South who will all be nervous about their parliamentary seats at the next general election.”

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